August 21, 2014

PSB left this morning on a trip to the UK - she’s not back until September 6th, which means I am on solo Harold duty for over two weeks.

YIPES.

Well, to be honest, it’s not going to be all that bad. We communicate well, and generally get along great, aside from dada crankieness and four year old id-ness.

Plus, he’s going to go stay with Grampy and Grammy for four days over the long Labor Day weekend, so it will just be me and Hamilton, which should be very relaxing. I imagine I can find some trouble to get into as well.

July 13, 2014

I don’t know who might be reading this anymore, but I remembered something from a while ago that it’s really good to keep a journal, and this kind of is one. Granted, it’s not as personal as a journal, and it’s also modified in some manner to try and make it remotely funny/interesting to read, but it’s still a good tracker of my mood and state of mind, as well as a glimpse into what’s going on at the moment in my life. Another one, anyway, after my Facebook timeline. So here are a few things:

1. I’ve been noticing that my dress shirts have been feeling a little big, especially in the arms. I was about to buy some new dress shirts online and got a little nervous that I was buying the wrong size, so I googled how to take correct shirt measurements, and measured myself, and in fact, while I’ve been buying myself 16 1/2″ neck 34/35″ sleeve shirts for the past ten years, I should have been buying 16″ neck 32/33″ sleeve shirts. The neck is not such a big deal, but the sleeves? I must have had a shirt shrink on me a long time ago and then decided that I needed the bigger size. . . I’m not sure. Of course, with my luck, these new shirts will show up and they will be too small.

2. We were unable to make the trip to Maine this year - PSB had a conflicting business trip. After waiting way too long to book something, we finally were able to find something we’d both be happy with - a little cottage almost right on the beach in Old Lyme, Connecticut. Close to Mystic so we can go to the aquarium, close to Mohegan Sun, close to the beach so Harry can run in the surf all day. . . there’s no AC but there will be lots of fans (I might pack one as well), and otherwise it looks cute and will hopefully be a fun, relaxing week.

3. My extra assignments with a different department are coming to an end in a few weeks. It’s been challenging and not much fun, and I’m really glad that it’s over. I know that everyone is very appreciative of the work I did, which is great, but it’s still very frustrating that I did $30,000 or $40,000 worth of someone else’s salary, and I’m going to get $500 if I’m lucky as a bonus. I’m ready for a new position. We have our National Meeting in September this year, and after that I’m going to start looking again. Fortunately my manager is totally on board with the idea. I’ve been incredibly lucky with the bosses I’ve had throughout my life, I can only think of two that I really did not like, and one wasn’t even my boss, she was a sub-boss. . .

May 28, 2014

Harry is four now. FOUR. He’s totally awesome. 95% super well behaved, and funny, and sweet.

Twin D has another baby! She is about as sweet as a two week old can be. When I met her at two days old, she was very calm, and I know it’s ridiculous to say but I really feel like she was looking at me a lot.

My job has been really crazy for the past three months, as I’ve been covering for another colleague who’s been out on medical leave. I’ve taken over 70% of her responsibilities, and they are, to put it lightly, not much fun. But they’re almost done, and then I can go back to just doing my job.

I’ve been messing around with online poker again after taking some time off - I find it a little easier to play it rather than video games sometimes at night when I’m tired. You don’t need the reflexes to play. However, I’ve got a small roll (aka not much money online) and I’ve lost 3/4 of it in less than a week. Some of it I will free admit was bad play (perhaps I should not play ANYTHING when I’m tired). But also, I’ve lost a very large number of hands with all of my money in the pot where I was WAY ahead - 80% to win preflop, 70% to win postflop, situations like:

Me - -Jerkoff
AA vs. QQ - Q on the board
AA vs. QQ - board has 9 10 J and K on it.
QQ vs. A10 - four nines on the board. The fourth on the river, of course.

I’ve lost to some four card flushes as well, where the other player had no reason to stay in, and I’ve run QQ into KK twice and AA once or twice too. UGLY.

I’ve tighten up a LOT and dropped down levels (as painful as that is) and will need to rebuild. Just like the good old days. So far it’s going a little better. I will consider moving back up with I double where I’m at now (which will get me halfway back to where I was before). . .

November 14, 2013

Yesterday I had an all day training session at work, and PSB was working at home, and so I woke up a little earlier than usual to ensure I had time to get Harry to daycare and then to the session within a reasonable amount of lateness (just for the record, the training was for other people and I was just auditing). As we arrived to Harry’s classroom, I remembered that it was Show and Share Day, and that we were supposed to have something for Harry to show to his class and talk about. The letter of the week was “K”. I panicked, and then thought, “Hey, I’ll give him my keys! Perfect!”

Then I thought, “Is this a good idea? Maybe I should give him just a few of my keys? Do I have anything else in my bag that starts with K?”

Then I thought, “Nah. It’ll be fine, give him the whole ring. He won’t lose them.”

So I left my keys. All of them. House keys and office keys.

I began to have second thoughts as I walked towards the subway. I snarked on Facebook via my phone, “This isn’t going to end in disaster, right?”

When I got to work, I realized my first mistake - my office was locked, and I didn’t have the key, and my laptop was inside, which I needed for the training session. Fortunately, the admin right down the hall from my office had a master. I headed up to the session, a little bit but not outrageously late, and camped out for the day.

When I went to pick up Harry, I immediately went to his cubby, where my keys should have been waiting in the basket. Of course, they weren’t there.

I got Harry and his teacher, and we began to go through the classroom. Harry kind of understood that we were looking for something, but didn’t quite realize that we were going to be locked out of the apartment (PSB was supposed to be heading out to a show that night and would be gone by the time we got home.) I left the teacher and went to check at the front desk. The school administrator checked the lost and found, and had an envelope with keys in it! Except they weren’t mine. She then headed back to the classroom to search as well.

After ten minutes of searching, getting more and more frustrated, I gave up. I called PSB and asked her if she could stay home until we got back, and then I’d give her money so she could take a car to the theater. The teacher and administrator kept searching - they started going through other kids’ stuff. (I figured another kid had picked them up and brought them home, and hopefully a parent would find them and bring them back in the morning.)

As we were waiting for the elevator, I heard a triumphant cry - I turned the corner, and they had somehow found my keys! One of the kids had grabbed them at some point, but instead of taking them home, stuffed them in their bag which they had left at school. Hooray! Disaster averted. Barely.

August 15, 2013

Tonight we’re off to Peter Luger for a steakfest, in honor of my birthday. The other Polenboys will treat, and I will eat me some delicious delicious steak.

This afternoon, in preparation, instead of eating an entire box of granola bars like I wanted to, I went and worked out for the first time in a while. I consider myself incredibly lucky that I stay in relatively good shape and my metabolism, while certainly slowing (no more eating a pint of Ben and Jerry’s every night and never gaining an ounce like in college), is still pretty good.

I get incredibly bored working out, so at work, I try to time it so I can be on a machine for 45 minutes and watch the last three quarters of a random show - preferably something I wouldn’t care too much about watching anyway. NCIS, Castle, and Las Vegas are good examples, and any of the three Law and Orders work too - good shows, but not something I watch all the time. (PSB and I used to watch SVU, but once Stabler left we couldn’t bear to watch - most of the plots were really stupid by that point anyway.) I’d rather miss the first 15 minutes and just figure out what’s going on and see the ending rather than see 45 minutes of an episode and then miss the end. (Well, sure, I could work out for an hour, but that’s just crazy!) Back at home I would watch two Archers and have a complete workout, but my data plan got switched a couple of months ago (no more unlimited data???? Thanks Obama. I mean Verizon.) and so now I’m hesitant to use that much bandwidth. I guess I could watch one and see how many megs I use.

June 27, 2013

I’m going to post about the two awesome things I did so far this week HERE!

(EGAD!)

Tuesday night the Polenboys got together for a very belated birthday dinner for Twin A. We’ve been treating the birthday boy to a very fancy meal, and we broke the bank Tuesday night by spending some time at Nobu. Their omakase is quite delicious, as is their sake. I’ve been lucky enough to eat there a few times before (their Restaurant Week prices are totally reasonable, especially lunch!), and it is always amazing.

Last night I was lucky enough to attend the New York premiere of The Way Way Back - PSB knows one of the producers from, well, sorry but it’s true, way way back - she taught him when she was in college and he was in high school! We caught a quick dinner before the movie, and at first we were a little concerned because there were 200 people on line to get in, and we weren’t sure if we should be on that line or walking the red carpet. Fortunately, PSB sent her friend a quick text, and was told that we had reserved seats and tickets being held for us on will call. We found the desk and got our tickets and were quite relieved that we didn’t have to stay on that mega-line. I was super psyched to also note that we were sitting about 15 feet away from Toni Colette, but I managed to not harass her or yell “You’re terrible Muriel!”

The movie itself is outstanding. Honestly, it was everything I had hoped Adventureland was going to be. Full of awesome teenage angst, and very very funny, and very sweet. It was extremely well cast and well acted and had a great story. I highly recommend it when it opens later this summer.

June 25, 2013

Boy, I haven’t posted in a while. I never blogged about the spring trip to Las Vegas with Twin D which was awesome, I never blogged about how I spent 45 minutes cleaning puke off of Harry, his clothes, the car seat, the ZipCar, and myself while driving him to a birthday party in Manhattan, and who knows what other stuff. Perhaps I will return to those stories some day.

Today I just want to post this gif, because it made me laugh at work. (You’ll have to go to the site to see it, as I don’t think the Polenblog is set up for gifs or something.)

February 22, 2013

So about a week ago I created an imaginary earworm. As in, I got a song that doesn’t exist stuck in my head. I came up with the lyric “And you’re so cray cray, but it’s okay-kay” at some point, and then it just played over and over and over in my head. In the hopes of removing it, I commented on Facebook that someone should come up with the entire song. The Prototype came up with the following, which in my opinion is ready for Top 40 action:

You’re so cray cray
But it’s okay kay

Cuz we only just a dick thang
We just a dick thang

Think you got me but you don’t
Gonna catch me but you won’t

Cuz we only just a dick thang
We just a dick thang

Girl you see me Rollin up
Whip cruz low
Wearing Dolce Gabana
Head to toe

You know you goin get wit this
Wanna flip this trick
And though you gonna hit this
No you ain’t goin stick

Cuz you so cray cray
But it’s okay Kay

Cuz we only jus a dick thang
We just a thang

Won’t get what you think you will
Just cuz you foggin up ma grill

Cuz we only just a dick thang
We just a dick thang

Now bay be you buggin now
With that mean look
Cuz I’m all up on some bitches
Offa your Facebook

And though you wanna dis girl
Know what this about
We still gonna get to this girl
Then I goin be out

December 13, 2012

I figured I’d post it here instead of the almighty Facebook for once. . .

The L train is 2 for 4 so far this week for completely sucking in the morning. More irritatingly, I’ve been waking up at a normal hour every morning due to morning meetings, and I was super late to one of them, and right on time for the others. This morning was a bad L train morning, but because I didn’t have Harry with me I just hoofed it to the G and took it to the 7, and made it just in time to grab a bunch of mini bagels and some coffee and a bottle of water (an actual bottle of water, something that’s become a scarcity around here, mostly it’s a good thing but every once in a while it would be really handy to have a bottle of water instead of having to find a pantry and use one of the filtered water dispensers). Somehow I didn’t win any awards during the meeting. I’m not quite sure why not, although the fact that they did not give an award out for slacking greatly diminished my chances.

That’s all for now. I totally should be doing this other work that I needed to do two days ago, but I’ve also had so many stupid meetings that I haven’t been able to do anything, slack-wise or work-wise. So now I slack for a minute, then I’ll totally do it. Like, really. I will.

November 13, 2012

I woke up at 7 am Vegas time, not having gotten enough sleep but not going to be able to sleep any further. I figured, well, why not go back down to the tables? I headed down to the poker room, and surprisingly there were two tables going and I got a seat within 15 minutes. I fared a little better, and at one point managed to win a $100 bonus by catching quads.

Twin A got up and I managed to get a rental car - $100 for the day (there goes that bonus!), which is double what Twin D and I would have paid for a two day rental. Oh well. I drove out to pick up Twin A and we went to brunch at the Wynn, which once again was amazingly delicious. Even Twin A was impressed. Only, for some reason, the coffee was a little gross. I was also introduced to the joys of valet parking, which is apparently free everywhere in Las Vegas (I had no idea). I managed to lose my ticket though, which required a little explaining and a little extra paperwork, but it all worked out.

We then headed over to the Pinball Hall of Fame for a little while, which was magnificent as always - Twin A and I squared off at Twilight Zone and each won a game against each other, and I also discovered that I was strangely good at ACDC pinball.

We then drove to the airport to pick up Kissyfur, who was flying in for the week. I dropped them back at Twin A’s hotel, the Trump International, so they could have some smoochy time, and I went back to the Rio for some more poker. On the way, I didn’t understand what my GPS was telling me so I got a little lost, but in the process I found the Spearmint Rhino. (No, I did not go in.)

I went back to the poker tables and again, fared a little better - no giant hands but I wasn’t losing either.

I picked A and Kissyfur back up around 7 and we headed out for dinner. We went to Estiatorio Milos in the Cosmopolitan - Twin A was treating for my birthday, and since he was making extra money for being out in Las Vegas - the meal was exquisite. I had some fresh fish flown in that day from Greece, and all their appetizers were ridiculously good, and dessert was also outstanding. It was quite a feast.

After dinner we wandered around the strip some, and watched the Bellagio fountains, and then I went up with A and Kissyfur to see A’s pad - not terrible, but there was a train track nearby, and the trains liked to blow their horns a lot. . .

I headed back to the Rio for one last poker binge, and again, I did okay. No major hands of note, and I won some more. I ended up winning around $200, and had covered my expenses in the meantime as well.

I’m going to head back in the spring if I can. There is a Facebook game that will actually give you comp Vegas hotel rooms for playing it. You have to play it a LOT, but hey, free is free. I could combine two nights through them and two nights through my Total Rewards account, and have four days out there, which would be awesome.

Twin A or Kissyfur, if you happen to read this and want to comment on anything I might have missed/forgotten, feel free. . . it’s all a little hazy now at this point.